


A canvas of experiences

by Shitgetapen



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: M/M, Tattoos, for a really nice person, talking and talking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-04
Updated: 2013-04-04
Packaged: 2017-12-07 11:59:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/748271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shitgetapen/pseuds/Shitgetapen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jehan found himself to be fascinated with it continuing to trace the lines asking on bated breath and the ink seems to spin itself into poetry, and Grantaire’s word were just as captivating as any sonnet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A canvas of experiences

**Author's Note:**

> Un-beta'd so if you see a thing tell me about the thing or just like general feedback, I'm really tired posting this so I've probably lost a paragraph or something.

The sun was setting in the cafe casting long shadows of the tables of chairs across the floor, and Jehan was slumped in one of the sofas with a group of the amis. He was the picture of content at that very moment, lying in this late summer sunshine in his favourite cafe surrounded by his closest friends he felt he had no reason to be sad, at least for an evening his melancholy had been dismissed by the warmth like a old dog being shooed from a room, no doubt it will eventually creep back in to sleep on the carpet but for the moment but for now it is too scarred by the harshness of his happiness to even set foot. They had been celebrating for some reason or another and had begun drinking early leaving him feeling decidedly fuzzy by sunset, so it was no surprise he was quite late in realising that he was one of the only ones left.

Across the now nearly empty cafe Jehan could see Grantaire sitting on one of the far tables looking oddly out of place as he spoke animatedly to Bahorel while pretending he wasn’t still staring at the space his ‘Apollo’ had occupied until he wandered off, no doubt to talk to someone boring about something vastly more interesting than they deserved. He continued to watch Grantaire for a good few minutes, he was a dark spot in the light room and even his smile seemed dipped in something bitter ( _but how would it taste?_ ).  

He felt drawn to Grantaire, so abandoned Courfeyrac and Joly on the sofa despite the weak motion made to grab his hips and sit him back down (“no come back we love you”“But I haven’t even tried to kiss you yet.” “Fine go to your ‘tall, dark and not that handsome.” “Bring me back a drink”), Jehan hissed and slapped the overly friendly hands off him and continued to let himself to be pulled forward, because who could stand between nature? He was a moth to flame and who could come between that?

He recalled something he read as he walked the two metres over to their table, something about the way when moving towards a black hole the closer you get the slower time travels before stopping altogether when you’re inside it. And although he found science’s incessant need to throw logic and theories at the unexplainably terrible and beautiful an awful habit, he felt that fact could very well be true applied to his situation. The closer he got the slower he felt like he was moving but still the stronger the force gets. But when he did get there he would be very happy to spend that endless expanse of time with Grantaire with a picnic spread out on the blanket of nothingness, failing to order the chaos they fell into and choosing to marvel at it.

When he sat down they were talking fervently over something or another, he made no effort to try and catch up on the conversation so lay on Grantaire’s arm letting his eyes fall shut and just felt the world spin. That was until he was jogged into reality again. Torn from the image of him spinning down the curve of the Milky Way with only Grantaire’s arm to hold onto.

It’s a strong solid arm he mused, built up from his various sports (he had taken a fancy to volley ball this month), but it was also (he knew) very careful and controlled with an artist’s precision and a dancers sharpness, not a bad arm to have to hold onto. Opening his eyes he took to studying his arm further, he ran his hand up and down it like admiring the flank of a fine race horse. But his muscles didn't feel tense and ready to run any second at the sounds of the starting bell, but relaxed and maybe (he hoped) it was only half to do with the alcohol.

He ignored the looks the others were probably giving him to continue his examination, there were a collection of small scars peppered along bicep from when he fell on a glass bottle in a fight with Monty and had to go the hospital for stitches. They were regarded with passing interest and a phantom of the worry passing over him. His main interest was now the tattoos that covered almost his entire arm in a lattice of black ink, it had the semblance of frames of stained glass but only his olive skin shining through. Most of the lines were made of cursive quotes in a collection of languages he hadn’t the mind to read. Looking harder through the haze of alcohol he began to see the objects that also floated in the sea of words, he tried to interpret a theme or a meaning out of them but it was a mishmash of cultures and a junkshop full of other random objects proving it impossible.

"You're art" he finally breathed.

This apparently was not the answer to whatever question woke him up because both looked confused by this, (Bahorel by a lesser amount because Courfeyrac had sat himself on his lap after Joly left to join his beloveds at home). Grantaire turned to look Jehan smiling, the smile only seemed to touch his eyes in the same way one likes your co-workers, with a great sense of distance.

“No my little poet (‘ _I’m yours.’_ ) I’m more of a picture book. A collection of childish wonders put down by the hand of a foolish story teller, then drawn by someone who might be an artist. But _I_ am not art. Though with the way arts going maybe they will hang me up...”

“Then maybe a library?” Jehan smiled

“Maybe. But would I be leant out? Or kept in a case like a rare edition? Only to be touched when my case needs cleaning or when I need to be shown to someone rich enough to pay.”

“You’d be leant out. Everyone needs a chance to be inspired, to find a book good enough to take them away out of the ordinary, to have the chance to feel the joy of a great book even if they don’t have the means of buying them. Besides...” An impish grin crept onto his face, “you were made to be touched.”

Grantaire who had been staring at him intently looked away, his eyes now set back on the noticeably empty spot on the other side of the room. Jehan wanted those eyes back on him, he appreciated the attention, perplexed as it was. Grantaire had paid little mind to the poet until now, yes he sat at his table more often than not, yes they usually stayed behind longer, yes they sometimes enjoyed a gentle conversation, but not like now. Though he knew the poet loved everyone and was not afraid to show it sometimes, it was odd to be on the receiving end of it. To have any affection thrown at him was rare, so he was a little thrown especially when he’d already drunk a lot of whisky it was easy to misread the air.

“Grantaire?”

He’s met by a grunt as a reply but that’s enough to encourage Jehan further.

“Tell me a story, like um... who’s this?”

It took Grantaire a moment to realised that question actually needed an answer, he turned back to see Jehan had slipped down his chair a bit so looked up at him through his eye lashes, he flicked his eyes quickly to his own arm angling it to see exactly what he was being asked of (‘Her. Her.’ Jehan continued to punctuate while tracing the curves of a small figure squeezed between some poetry and an olive branch).

“She.” He started, looking slightly proud as if laughing at his own inside joke. “Is Tlazolteotl.” Maybe it was the pronunciation he was proud of because even repeating it would be a struggle especially with his drunken tongue.

“Well on the surface she’s an Aztec god. The patroness of adulterers, the goddess of filth and purification.” He made grand gestures with his other arm when he listed her attributes, Jehan could see why he picked her. Despite his belief in nothing he made a hobby of looking at what people would do to explain reality (or to ‘escape from it’ as he put it). He hadn’t known about his interest in South America, but his interest in this god was pretty obvious.

“You probably think it’s probably obvious why I picked her. But it’s not that I really feel akin to the people she presides over, though you can read all you like into her aspects into forbidden or unlawful love if you’d like. But more to _what_ she presides over the filth and disease, like I’m a tool of hers to tarnish what some might like to view as a clean world and when it comes down to it we are just specks of dirt or even tiny particles in the grand scheme of things.”

Jehan’s eyes must have been glittering as he watched Grantaire tell his story, it was his voice more than anything that captured him. It was like the sound of car wheels just turning into a gravel drive was, grating but an odd comfort to it. The vowels seemed to drag longer and fall with the familiar fluidity of wine.

“And like I said that’s just the surface. She’s really a girl I met when I travelled that half a year, you remember?” A silent ‘I missed you’ is felt when Jehan drops his hand down to squeeze his wrist. Grantaire doesn’t visibly acknowledge it but his tone softens just a touch and he looks at Jehan in the eyes again. “Well she was something of a priestess and something of a drunkard, so we got on, she used to tell me about these gods when we were so pissed I hadn’t the heart to argue, and in return she listened to me. I’m not a gentleman, so I will say we did indulge in some of the... what did I say? Un-pure love? But this goddess also was for purification so when I spoke to her it was a sort of confessional, and when you let everything go and lie back in the arse end of nowhere in unbearable heat with just this girl and your secrets and a pack of cigarettes between you, it’s then when she’s telling you about a serpent ripping out your throat with some stars is when you realise how pointless all this god bullshit is. We’re just human and god I felt human.

“So this is to her. She helped me sort some shit out and she sends me the good tequila.”

Grantaire voice went into the dangerously sentimental before being pulled back into the facade of mirth he speaks with when he raises his bottle in a half toast and downs it. Jehan motions for some to be poured in a cup for him (Joly would throw a fit at him using the abandoned glass without so much as whipping the rim Jehan smiled when he could almost hear ‘there’s a flu going round you know!’).

Sitting himself up again he put his head on Grantaire’s shoulder, “She sounds nice, cheers,” he mumbled into the fabric of his t-shirt. With a small sigh sipping his drink (brandy) he let the tale sink in, he could see Grantaire and this girl spread out side by side in a dessert shining with sweat and uttering drunken whispered prayers under a full moon. It was a nice image, but Jehan still felt a pull of jealousy at one of his ribs, so instead dwelt on the present.

It felt like it was just the two of them now in their corner and maybe it was, Jehan didn’t care so didn’t look. Only concentrating on cataloguing the moment and not being pushed away (though he was hardly be accepted either). He could feel the muscles shift slightly under the thing grey t-shirt he wore. He could smell the summer on Grantaire’s neck (sweat and cut grass) and the smell the brandy clung to him just as he clung to the bottle, underneath it all he could smell a semblance of aftershave too expensive to be Grantaire’s own, altogether it was not unpleasant. Opening his eyes he flicked them upwards to see Grantaire looking at him curiously again before flicking off the window seat opposite them, it wasn’t a pretty face but there was something beautiful in it. In the strong jaw, in his dark eyes with long eyelashes, the almost forgetful amount of stubble, and squashed nose, somewhere in there there was beauty.

Moving his hand from where it was still wrapped around his wrist to interlink their fingers, he stretched their arms out in front of them it seemed to admire the contrast of olive skin with black ink against smooth freckled cream. Instead he had turned his interest back to the tattoos.

“Tell me about this one.” He asked, his voice was reduced to only a soft murmur, as if he was a million miles away swept away Grantaire’s stories and this was his returning echo. Or maybe he was afraid if he spoke someone may come over and break the magic they seem to have woven around them, Jehan could barely move for fear of cracking it and letting the outside word in but he slowly moved his hand to chase an errant line of Latin up his sleeve.

And Grantaire complied, it surprised himself how talkative he was tonight. He wondered if it was the poet that made it easy to talk or maybe he was feeling unusually talkative about himself or maybe it was the drink. But he rattled off the story about the bruise he got at his first gig a from accidently getting into the middle of the mosh pit. _Carpe diem_.

“And this one?” (An R in the style of a medieval illumination, because he felt like it).

“And this?” (Two lines of poetry in cursive, ‘And when, alas! our brains are gone, // What nobler substitute than wine?’ When he started drinking and boxing as a hobby and read a poetry anthology on a stranded train between London and Brighton).

“And?” (A artistic bottle with an quote in French flowing from the neck, Jehan translated it quickly ‘after moral poisoning, one requires physical remedies and a bottle of champagne’, the bottle because Bahorel made a joke the he should never be far from a bottle lest he dies like a fish out of water, the words after when he realised how true that was).

Jehan found himself to be fascinated with it continuing to trace the lines asking on bated breath and the ink seems to spin itself into poetry, and Grantaire’s word were just as captivating as any sonnet he’d read. But he didn’t just listen sometimes he interjected with his own quiet stories or questions. Though mostly he listened and made soft sounds of encouragement to show he was still listen/still awake, occasionally he pressed a kiss to the shoulder and pretended he didn’t feel Grantaire shiver more than once. Grantaire didn’t look too long at Jehan, at least not when Jehan was looking at him, but he wasn’t pushed away either and his hand was still happily tangled in his.

He pressed a kiss to the piece of skin just under the sleeve of his t-shirt noticing a tangle of vines seeming to weave with no apparent purpose upwards and in between the other objects like weeds between paving stones. Jehan was starkly reminded for a moment by the leather bound collection on Greek myths that Combeferre had got him for his birthday, on its cover it had embossed golden vines the hung bending ripe with fruit, _and_ _with sin_ he added silently. He told Grantaire this in a cautious fashion, in reply he laughed “if only you had Midnas’ touch then you could make these golden too, could study me forever. If you’d like.” He thought for a moment about Grantaire golden. Grantaire burning wild in this setting sun, shining and unbroken like a god. Holding golden fruit to make golden wine, and like king Midnas would Jehan die of thirst even when there’s apparently no end to what he could drink because he was not a god too? He would drink the nectar off his lips if he could. He would drink him dry. Then coming back to reality and the real Grantaire, he realised he vastly prefers the soft warm flesh he leans on now, broken as it is. Yes golden he would be a statue, that clever clever mouth still forever, and a silver tongue should never try to be gilded in gold.

“I would,” he paused to work his mouth for a moment the words seemed to had stuck to the roof of his mouth, so he sipped whatever was left in his cup which seemed to help. “I would much prefer you breathing. But... I’m not adverse to the thought of studying you further.” He spoke slowly and carefully like walking over landmines, and in that same manner shifted to sit on across Grantaire's lap, forcing him finally to look at him for more than a extended glance. Jehan didn’t break eye contact as he lifted their hand and placed a kissed on one of Grantaire's bruised knuckles.

He flicked his eyes down to look at his mouth, it hung open a little like an invitation. So taking a deep breath he leaned in to close that final bit of distance. The kiss was chaste and almost sweet, but when Grantaire pulled away he looked conflicted. “It’s late.” He said with no weight behind it, so Jehan was surprised that when he went to lean in again and Grantaire just ducked his head with a bitter smile shaking his head. “Goodnight Prouvaire.” that, a kiss on the cheek and one last longing look at the window seat was all Jehan got after he shifted back to his old seat (it felt significantly colder and uncomfortable than it did before).

He watched Grantaire walk back across the darkened cafe and then watched the receding figure amble away until he turned the corner of the street, even then he kept an eye on the long shadow he left in his wake until that also was dragged along, Jehan wondered if it was as reluctant to see him leave as he was him so that's why it stretched so long. But now he could almost hear his voice of reason now after the initial alcohol had burned off, so his more poetic thoughts were dismissed after a few seconds, and so without all the myths and flowers to fill in the gaps it left him quite alone on his table in the corner. Not even the ghost of an alcoholic to keep him company.

Downing the dregs of Grantaire’s drink, (just to imagine the taste of his mouth, he's sure he wouldn't taste like it at all but like smoke , electricity, lost morals and those stories. However Jehan found it fulfilled something in him), he left.


End file.
